The California Tree Poppy (aka “Fried Egg Plant” lol) is a California native and just a really cool plant. It likes full sun (needs 6 per day to flower regularly) and sandy, well-drained soil. This thing semi-aggressively spreads so it’s a good idea to use a root barrier or grow it in a container unless you like chasing down newly-sprouted volunteer plants. Please don’t grow this in the ground with no root barrier outside its native range as it could be considered invasive. We use cactus mix with some worm compost and grow it in containers.
It’s recommended that you prune it down to 4-5 inches in the autumn/winter. This plant is native to California and Pacific Coast Mexico but will grow in the south of the US/North Mexico. I’m told it’s been imported to Australia and does well there in the desert. This is a low water plant. In SoCal, I don’t even water it.
It does fine in neutral to alkaline soil and it’s planting mix can be gravelly.
The flowers are huge – upto 5 inches accross and very striking with their crepey white petal and bring yellow center. The flowers have a sort of apricot scent and you can use them as arranged flowers.
The plant will reach 4-8 feet tall and 6-8 feet wide if left to its own devices. But it can spread vertically much further than that if left to its own devices.
A word of warning, we will send these in plastic nursery pots. The reason we grow them in plastic containers and don’t bareroot them like they sometimes do on Etsy is because this plant transplants rather badly. It’s best to use some pruning shears and cut away the plastic pot and place the new plant very carefully into your spot. It gets transplant shock pretty easily. If this happens, please send us a picture and we’ll reship you a new plant for free’s (once). After the first time, please learn and be more careful. This really can’t be emphasized enough. Sometimes people “propagate” this plant by digging up the volunteers when the plant tried to spread out. If you do this, there’s a good possibility that the transplant will go into shock and at the minimum look terrible for a while and might likely die.
Other things to watch for: Don’t overwater or use too much moisture-retainging material in the planting mix. This’ll take your sunniest spot where other stuff might burn.
Here’s the deets on the nomenclature of this plant:
Kingdom: Plantae, Phylum: Streptophyta, Class: Equisetopsida, Subclass: Magnoliidae, OrderL Ranunculales, Family: Papaveraceae, Genus Romneya, Species: Romneya coulteri
Our pricing for this plant is $100 and includes one replacement plant if yours shocks on transplant. Hit us up for an invoice.